Members of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Monday, observed a work-free day as directed by the ASUU national and warned that the Federal Government’s inability to keep to agreements reached with the union is capable of crippling university education in the country.
The union, in a press statement, endorsed by the Chairman and Secretary, Ray Chikogu and Success Absomwan respectively, and made available to journalists in Benin City, after its special congress said that the union was compelled to state that the Federal Government and its agents were determined to cripple academic activities in the nation’s universities.
The statement reads in part: “We are compelled to make a statement at this defining moment in the history of university education in Nigeria that it is becoming clear that the Federal Government wants to cripple university education in Nigeria.
“Since December 22, 2020, when it signed a Memorandum of Action (MoA) with our Union, stating in clear terms that it was finally prepared to fulfil its obligations to the Nigeria University System and to university lecturers, all we have got has been a charade of lies, insincerity, dishonesty and half-truths till date from the agents and representatives of the Federal Government.
“As we speak, the Federal Government is yet to make good its promise to actualise the review of our dismal conditions of service, is still unwilling to pay up years of arrears of promotion entitlements, still pays lip service to the duty of adequately funding education and continues to be reluctant to deploy the already widely acclaimed University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) despite the well-publicised fraudulence, inefficiency and ineffectiveness in which the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Service (IPPIS) is mired.”
“It is unimaginable that in the face of the daily exponential increases in the cost of basic services and goods in Nigeria, university lecturers have been abandoned to grapple with the harsh realities of an abysmally poor salary structure that they have had to endure for thirteen agonizing years,” the union reiterated.
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